wow, it is a 3800 party this weekend. I am glad both of your swaps turned out ok.

It really was nerve racking turning that key for the first time, you really don't know what to expect.

I haven't ran mine long enough to see if the coolant fan come on, so I can't say everything is working corectly just yet.

I have been having one problem though, my boost gauge reads vacuume, and not boost. I have it tapped off the FPR, so I know there is boost there. I think my tensioner is bad, and the belt is slipping and not turning the supercharger fast enough. If I rev it up, all the gauge reads is more vacuume. You think this could be the problem?

I OWN PAGE 5!

[This message has been edited by Golden86 (edited 04-02-2006).]

Do you still have the reciept for the purchase of that hose from autozone? The people at autozone don't show a XL-1004 in their computers. They won't work with you unless you know the damn vehicle, and telling them its for a fiero doesn't exactly help much.

I'm trying to figure out what car this was stock on, or someother part number they can put into their computer and get some results.

quote Originally posted by Jncomutt: Do you still have the reciept for the purchase of that hose from autozone? The people at autozone don't show a XL-1004 in their computers. They won't work with you unless you know the damn vehicle, and telling them its for a fiero doesn't exactly help much. I'm trying to figure out what car this was stock on, or someother part number they can put into their computer and get some results.

Sorry I don't have the reciept. When I went into my AZ, I gave them the part number, and they went straight to their radiator hose section and found it. They didn't have to type in a part number at all. Maybe I am lucky, and the guys at my AZ know what they are doing.

What did you take that exhaust flange from, or did you make that as well?

Yea, the people at AZ here are idiots and I'm too lazy to walk to the hose section and look.

I made that flange myself, it is for a 3" exhaust. I do have another one, I can sell it to you if you want it, $35 shipped.

BTW, ZZP sells a 3" exhaust gasket that fits it perfectly.

[This message has been edited by Golden86 (edited 04-04-2006).]

I sent you a PM.

Back at ya

Nice job on the exhaust. Im almost at the point of welding it together. My exit from the dump flange is going away from the alternator.

How do you know it isnt charging? Alternator light? Low or no gauge read out? Does you alternator light come on? Mine too is wired the samew as the fiero and am using the GTP alternator. I splice the exciter wire into the (+) wire coming out of the alternator works great.

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" DRIVE IT LIKE YOU LOVE IT"

[This message has been edited by ohio86se (edited 04-04-2006).]

quote Originally posted by ohio86se: Nice job on the exhaust. Im almost at the point of welding it together. My exit from the dump flange is going away from the alternator. How do you know it isnt charging? Alternator light? Low or no gauge read out? Does you alternator light come on? Mine too is wired the samew as the fiero and am using the GTP alternator. I splice the exciter wire into the (+) wire coming out of the alternator works great.

I am using the stock fiero alternator, actuaslly one from autozone, kind of explains why it is broken. I am also using aftermarket gauges, and I don't have a charging light, but it readt jut under 11 volts, which is very low for a running car.

You may need the charge light to turn on the alt.

quote Originally posted by Jncomutt: You may need the charge light to turn on the alt.

What do you mean, all I have to do is hook up a light behind the dash and be doen with it. does it matter if the light is burned out?

Don't forget to throw some clothes in the back and take if for a test drive to see if they burn...

j/k jeff

quote Originally posted by carbon: Don't forget to throw some clothes in the back and take if for a test drive to see if they burn... j/k jeff

I have a ton of room next to the heat shield, I made sure of that

Well, I finished the swap today, but I found out that the engien has a rod knock, so it is garbage. I basicly have to do the whole swap over again.

Here is what I did with the intake, 2 3.5" pipes

This is what I did to the decklid to clear the broken engine

A great pic of the POS engine

I can't believe that I have to deal with this, I have to tear it ALL out again, and do it ALL over!

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[This message has been edited by Golden86 (edited 04-05-2006).]

Man that sucks royaly. Sory to hear that, I wish you good luck on the quest for a working new motor, or rebuild.

you have got to be kidding????? please say you were in jail or something for the last 4 days and this is your april fools joke? I come home from work and run for this thread every night to see the progress! This is no good! -gary-

Nope, not kidding, as soon as the engien gets over 2000rpm, all hell breaks loose. I wish it was a joke, the only joke is that this is Engine number 2 thats dead. All before I could really drive it.

A motor coming from Ed with only 51 K on it shouldnt be knocking. Then again, you did dig into it and add the cam, chain, heads, ect. so something might have went wrong there. Do you have any idea of what might have happen to cause it to knock? I know the feeling of having to pull everyhting out and starting over, did it when my car got T-boned. It will be well worth it once you have it complete and running though. I have almost the same setup minus the P/P heads and it screams and pulls to no end. Good luck with the next motor.

I didn't even touch the bottom end, so I don't think anything could have gone wrong there.

quote Originally posted by Golden86: I went over to my uncles house to pick up the exhaust, I couldn't ask for a better welding job, it came out great. There was A LOT of tight bends with this exhaust, we had to get a little creative. It is all TIG welding with stainless filler.

Golden:
You may want to check into something like this for your exhaust setup. They are exhaust donuts and will get rid of that "kink" in your exhaust setup. I cant imagine that it's good for the exhaust flow - especially with all those goodies going into the motor to make it a screamer...

They come in all kinds of ID's, and are not $$ at all for what you are getting. I will get the name of the co tomarrow that you can contact for one for your setup. I know that they came in super handy with the tight corners for my exhaust. Rickady88GT turned me on to 'em, and I know that they helped him pass SMOG here with the use of the OEM cats on his exhaust.

--Allen

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** Rice; it''s what's COOKIN **

Hey Mike,

That sucks about the engine knock. Do you have any ideas where it's coming from? Think it's in the valve train or lower end? If it is the lower end you could always get a crank kit and have it back together in a day. Thats what I did with the 4.9 last year when it had a rod knock.

quote Originally posted by mcaanda: Golden: You may want to check into something like this for your exhaust setup. They are exhaust donuts and will get rid of that "kink" in your exhaust setup. I cant imagine that it's good for the exhaust flow - especially with all those goodies going into the motor to make it a screamer... --Allen

I was going to say somthing about the kink in the exhaust but figured I wouldnt.

quote Originally posted by FieroMaster88: Hey Mike, That sucks about the engine knock. Do you have any ideas where it's coming from? Think it's in the valve train or lower end? If it is the lower end you could always get a crank kit and have it back together in a day. Thats what I did with the 4.9 last year when it had a rod knock.

It is def in the lower end, I know it wont be that bad to pull the engine again, I know what to do now. I am just hopeing that it didn't spin a bearing, then I have to replace the rod too, which means I have to pull it down to a short block.

I feel your Pain!!!!!!!!!!

I had to replace 2 bad 3800's before the current 5k mile engine was good. First one was bad due to coolent leak in transporting the car across the country, I started it without coolent and had rod knock. Number 2 was my fault I sand blasted the intake and must have had sand still in it and took out the main bearings. I lived and learned the hard way. I keep a spare 3800 on hand now just in case there are problems. My spare cost me 200.

Good luck

i really feal your pain man i had thre bad 4.9s before i got my 4th one that seems to be good. the first was seized the second had no comprsion and the third was sieze worse than the first one. best of luck to you.

I do believe I am the current king of engine gernading right now so I know how it goes. Ive actualy made it FOUR months on my current 3.4DOHC so Im on a record streak. WHOOOO one for .... what is it now six?

quote Originally posted by Golden86: Well, I finished the swap today, but I found out that the engien has a rod knock, so it is garbage. I basicly have to do the whole swap over again. Here is what I did with the intake, 2 3.5" pipes This is what I did to the decklid to clear the broken engine A great pic of the POS engine I can't believe that I have to deal with this, I have to tear it ALL out again, and do it ALL over!

That stinks big time My first 3800sc 2 was bad due to the place leaving it out in the weather, They did all the stuff for motor storage but it was not enough, I ended up taking that engine apart and getting it bored 30 over, Everything looked good inside except for the rust pits (due to water) It was not siezed but it had to be bored. I bought new main bearings and rod bearings and had the crankshaft polished, Then ended up finding a nice engine with 25k on it for as much as I would pay for new pistons, And this engine was soo clean that I decided to just use it and not rebuild.

If it only had a rod knock, You could always just buy a new crankshaft and replace the rod bearings and mains(might as well), From the pics everything else looked good. But just to do the new crankshaft and rod bearings, You will have to drop the engine but you won't have to pull the heads. You can also drop the oil pan and check with a feeler gauge to see exactly what rod or bearing is shot. Normally if the rod is bad or spun then you will need to do the crankshaft, In these engines it's better to just go ahead and buy a new crankshaft then getting it turn down. But then again the rod could be trashed if it spun (and that requires a engine teardown). A spun bearing sounds very very bad tho.

You can find brandnew crankshafts for around $175 and the bearings costed me around $75bucks.

Another thing is, a engine that has been sitting without the oilpump being primed (hard to prime it on these since the oilpump is ran by the crankshaft) Will knock when first started, Then the sound will go away, My first 4.9 did that.

Another thing is, A New autozone or discount auto TO bearing (for the clutch) will sound exactly the same as a rod knock, My first TO bearing sounded like that and scared the crap out of me, But the sound went away when I stepped on the clutch so I knew it was the TO bearing it went away after awhile.

[This message has been edited by 86fieroEarl (edited 04-06-2006).]

Hmm, this whole thing really has me wondering, what sort of tuning did you do to the PCM before you started this motor? with that custom cam, you really have to tune the air fuel ratio to get it running right. Also you have done a ton of mods to this motor, that you really should look at before you asume that it is rod knock. Those heads could be in any sort of shape imaginable, I would do a compression check on all the pistons. I will second the fact i am confused that you are knocking on a 51k motor from Ed. I really think you need to get a SHORT sound clip of that motor making that noise at as low of an RPM as possible, so maybe we here on pennocks could figure this out a bit.

That is a very aggressive L67 buildup, one that would really need headers to get in low to mid 11's (my friend has that identical setup, with N* TB /MAF a gen 5 supercharger, and most importantly headers.). With that agressive of a buildup, you need to spend ALOT of time tuning the motor to make it run hardly at all. That knock could very well be from detontation due to extremely retarded or advanced timing adjustments your computer is making.

quote Another thing is, a engine that has been sitting without the oilpump being primed (hard to prime it on these since the oilpump is ran by the crankshaft) Will knock when first started, Then the sound will go away, My first 4.9 did that.

also a very big point. your engine will make tons of noise if it isnt getting oil where it should be, this happens when you do oilchanges alot. my gtp FREAKED OUT when I did my last oilchange with synthetic oil, it lasted for almost 5 mins at 1500rpms. Also, rodknock should be heard even a little bit at idle, RPMs have little to do with the fact a rod bearing is fried.

[This message has been edited by darkhorizon (edited 04-06-2006).]

It is most def a rod knock, we drained the oil today, and it looks like black metallic paint, there is so much metal in it. The ECM was tuned my Darth, and he had all the cam specs, and it idled great, it was even rich, so a lean condition is out of the question.

We will be dropping the cradle in the next few days,and pull the pan to see what is messed up under there.

I really don't think it is THAT aggresive of a build, I am only using a 3" pulley, when I could be down to a 2.8, or smaller. I am also using PEM's compaired to headers too. I could have gone A LOT further on this build up, but I didn't want to stress the engine more than what I needed. Anybody who knows about these engies knows that it has a very strong bottom end, and the crank was the least of my worries.

I talked to ED, and he is willing to work with me, I am not saying he shipped me a blown engine. For all I know, a little peice of metal could have found its way to the rod bearing and ate it up, thats just how my luck is. I am done being pissed about it, $hit happens, live and learn.

My next plan of action is to get a new shortblock, and have the whole assembley, with flywheel and all, balanced at a machine shop. Pull all the goodies off the engien I have now, and build up the short block, and slap it back into the car. I am going to spend the extra money and do it right this time.

[This message has been edited by Golden86 (edited 04-07-2006).]

I hate to ask but did you have oil pressure? If the engine had been sitting around for awhile the oil pump has lost its prime. Youll need to prime the pump and assure oil pressure before you start it. Cranking alone from what I understand will not prime the pump.

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" DRIVE IT LIKE YOU LOVE IT"

quote Originally posted by ohio86se: I hate to ask but did you have oil pressure? If the engine had been sitting around for awhile the oil pump has lost its prime. Youll need to prime the pump and assure oil pressure before you start it. Cranking alone from what I understand will not prime the pump.

I had 60psi for my oil pressure.

My father has been a certified GM mechanic for more than 30 years, and has built/rebuilt countless engines in his time, we went therough all the proper procedures. The only thing that we didn't check was the bearing clearances before installing it, the engine was so clean, we shouldn't have to check it with 51K on it.

[This message has been edited by Golden86 (edited 04-07-2006).]

Sounds like you purchased a bad engine. Been there done that too. Not saying it was on purpose or knowingly by seller but it happens. Also it is easier now to remove the engine cause its not like you have to fabricate anything anymore. We are enjoying our 3800 s/c in stock form so I can imagine how much fun yours will be when you get there.

Pete

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quote Originally posted by PBJ: Sounds like you purchased a bad engine. Been there done that too. Not saying it was on purpose or knowingly by seller but it happens. Also it is easier now to remove the engine cause its not like you have to fabricate anything anymore. We are enjoying our 3800 s/c in stock form so I can imagine how much fun yours will be when you get there. Pete

I know, my father says it will be a lot easier this time around, basicly like dropping the 2.8, which took us only a few hours.